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Friday, February 5, 2010

How To Successfully Use Google Placement To Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website

by Jeffrey Benson

The most frequent question you hear from online marketers is "how can I get more targeted traffic to my website at a cost I can easily afford?"

Many people and particularly the less experienced internet marketers find Google Placement Targeting very confusing, and it can often feel as if you are walking through a maze, not knowing where the gold is hidden or the exit is.

However, it is currently the undisputed No.1 method of getting traffic to any website, providing of course you know what you are doing. It isn't rocket science to learn the nitty-gritty of successful Google Placement Targeting; all you need to know are the main concepts.

Here's a quick and valuable guide to understanding how to get the best out of your Google placement campaigns without throwing away your money.

What exactly do the words "Google Placement" mean?

I'm sure you'll have noticed when visiting websites, many contain advertisements for other websites provided by Google, this is known as Google Adsense.

Website owners become Google 'Partners' when they want to generate an additional and sometimes a highly profitable income stream by advertising other people's products or services. They receive a code from Google which they position on a page or pages of their website where they want Google Adsense adverts to appear. Google will then send adverts to these locations which are relevant to the site's keywords - these website pages are often referred to as placements.

You can waste a lot of money on Google Placement targeting.

Possibly, the most intimidating thing for most marketers using Google placement targeting - is the massive number of placements on the Internet they can choose from. This makes it extremely difficult deciding where to place your ads for maximum results whilst keeping your cost as low as possible.

However, this massive amount of choice can be an advantage for the savvy Internet marketer, because they use specialized software to find exactly where to place their Google Placement ads so they get substantial volumes of highly targeted traffic, which they can easily convert into buyers, without having to spend a fortune.

However, if you are not very careful when selecting the web pages to advertise on, the 'flip' side can be - massive amounts of untargeted traffic at a high cost to you, but resulting in very few or no sales.

How to make money from Google Placement targeting?

To run a successful Google Placement targeting campaign, you first need to start by identifying the relevant keywords for your products or services. These keywords will help you to start finding the websites and web pages where you can place your ads.

Google placement tool can help you locate placement sites for your ads by using your selected keywords.

But, unfortunately this tool isn't very effective, because it only identifies the home page of websites that may not produce the highly targeted traffic you need. Remember, the watch word here is 'Targeted' traffic. You need Targeted traffic in order to make REAL money online.

This means you have to exactly identify web pages that are already pre-qualified for your products or services. Not websites that may contain somewhere some of your keywords or key phrases.

What is the difference between Google placement targeting and Google keyword targeting?

Simply put, Google Placement Targeting targets Websites whilst Google Keyword Targeting targets Keywords. With Google placement targeting, you choose the websites that carry Adsense ads, and with the right tool you can easily locate sites that your ideal prospects most frequently visit. This is where you want to place your ad for maximum targeted traffic, and you can do this on high priced keywords for a fraction of the normal cost.

The advantages of Google Placement targeting

The first advantage is that Google lets you choose the webpages that are already highly prequalified for your products and/or services. Providing you choose carefully, these websites and web pages are already attracting potential customers looking for what you sell. Simply put, they are your competitors' websites, and by targeting these sites, you are prequalifying your prospects so you get more quality traffic that is easier for you to convert into customers.

Secondly, you are able to use image ads in addition to text ads. Image ads, known as banner ads, are extremely good for placements because it allows Google to place your banners on the sites which you have chosen in your placement campaigns. This is a great way to leverage your ad serving opportunity. Just imagine being able to place your banners on 2,000, 3,000 or more websites. This will give you a ton of high quality traffic every day.

The third advantage is that Google displays only your ad in the Adsense box no matter the size of the box. Most Adsense boxes contain 2 to 4 ads within the box but with placement targeting your ad replaces the 2-4 ads in the box. This is a great advantage because no ad is competing with you in the ad space.

The fourth advantage is cost savings - with placement targeting you pay per thousands impressions (CPM) rather than paying per click, which can make Keyword targeting very expensive. With Placement targeting, Google allows you to bid CPM so you only pay a certain amount when Google displays your ad a thousand times.

Let's say you bid for $1.00 or $2.00 for every one thousand times Google displays your ad. It doesn't matter whether your ad receives 1 click, 20 clicks or even 500 clicks; you pay the same $1 or $2. It is easy to see why this is a huge advantage to online advertisers - if your ad converts well, it means you can get lots of clicks from highly targeted websites for just cents on the dollar.

Tips for getting more clicks and improving your conversions.

With Google placement targeting you can get performance reports just the same as you would with a keyword targeting campaign. So you can see how much you are spending, how many clicks you are getting and from which web pages the traffic is coming from. Google will also provide you with simple tips to improve your campaign results.

Monitoring your Placement targeting campaigns is very important. Google has the tools to track your campaign either from inside Adwords or by using Google Analytics. You will be able to see the placements that are producing the right kind of traffic and the ones that are wasting your money.

Any placement that is not getting clicks or maybe getting too many clicks but not producing sales - you need to delete, leaving only those placements that are producing the results you want.

It is always a good idea to test two ads against each other to find out which ad performs the best and then only use this ad in future campaigns or until you want to test another ad.

With placement targeting, what you need are the clicks. Just go for the clicks and let your webpage do the conversion and sale. The more clicks you get, the less you pay per click because you are paying the same amount per thousand impressions. The more quality clicks you get the lower your cost will be for each new customer.

To get lots of clicks from any placement make sure your ads are being displayed above the fold on the web pages you choose. This means, your ad position needs to be located where visitors can easily see it without having to scroll down the page. If your ad is below the fold people may not see it, but Google will still count it as an impression. So only choose top positions for your ads.

Also, make sure there aren't too many ad spots on the web page, because the more ad spots there are the less effective your ad will be. Only choose web pages that have one or two ad spaces close to the top of the page and you will be sure to get your money's worth. Follow these simple tips and you'll never go wrong.

The advantages of using images in placement targeting.

Image ads can be static as well as motion or animated and can be placed on selected content sites that accept banners which most content websites nowadays do. Google is now providing programs on image ads for internet marketers. With image ads, you experience vivid graphics and AdWords placement technology that are known to provide additional stimulus that emphasizes the real value of your products or services.

Image ads are run via content sites for campaigns that use placement targeting.

About the Author

Free video reveals how to create successful placement targeting and get up to 341.10% more traffic for the same money you are already spending. Download your free video from http://www.adplacementlocator.com

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Article sites are flooded with articles on Web Design and Search Engine Optimization (i.e. ways to get your site to show up high in the important search engines). Sometimes dozens of new articles are added every week. Most are not worth the effort it takes to read them. A few, however, are truly interesting and useful.

For this blog, the Cheap Web Hosting Report staff will post the best web design and search engine optimization articles we find on articles sites. We'll try our best to separate the small amount of meat from the piles of bone and gristle.